A Couple of Noteworthy Italians

From the Val di Noto in southeast Sicily comes the Morellito Cala Ianco (white grapes), a 90% Grillo/10% Catarotto blend that may be too good for its salad and seafood intentions.  This organic wonder follows its zesty/nutty nose with nuances of apricot, herbs, salinity, lemon and tangerine on the palate.  The management of this property says there is freshness and tension in this chalky textured, acid-driven effort.  Again from the winery owner comes this chestnut: "It's like diving into the ocean on a hot day."

Fonterenza's Pettirosso contrasts with Cala Ianco in every way.  Obviously, it's red wine.  It also has a pedigree, being from the Mt. Amiata neighborhood of Tuscany, although you wouldn't know it from the sparse bottle label.  The grapes here are Sangiovese and Ciliegiolo, again, if not great types, certainly more highly regarded than Sicillian Grillo.  And the marketing effort for this one is different.  Much more text is devoted to the making of this organic effort than to any colorful adjectives for the finished product.

Pettirosso is Sangiovese-based so it marries well with typical Italian pasta dishes.  Reviews available to us say "black cherries, brown spice, balsam herbs and cocoa."  Someone else said "wild berries with violet florals."  We like that.  It says the wine is complex and the sum of all the company winemaking analytics tells us this is a serious example of its type. 

Sicily

This reminds me of the time we intended to compare and contrast Zinfandel wines made from grapes grown at different latitudes.  In our mind's eye we assumed northern California was a higher latitude than southern Italy.  It isn't.  They are pretty much the same latitude so our tasting of examples from both places morphed into a contrast of wine cultures.  Based on wine styles our conclusion was: California makes cocktail wines; Europe makes drier dinner wines.

Sicily is an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea so to our way of thinking, it must be small.  Islands are small, right?  Wrong again.  This island contains twenty-three DOCs (wine appellations) and one DOCG, a guaranteed highest quality level appellation.  The island itself is a DOC, making it Italy's largest wine appellation. 

Six thousand years ago Greek traders introduced the first vines to Sicilian soil.  Three thousand years ago they brought their winemaking skills and technology to the island and the Sicilian wine industry was born.  As "the Crossroads of the Mediterranean," that industry flourished.

So not only is Sicily huge with a very long winemaking history, it is also very diverse in its winemaking culture.  Twenty-four percent of Sicily is mountainous allowing for Sicily to reflect the same gamut of climates the mainland has.  The Val Demone in the northeast side of Sicily is home to the finest wines of Sicily.  That is where Mount Etna reigns as the highest peak in Italy with vineyards inhabiting elevations up to 4,000 feet.  The red wines made from the Nero Mascalese grape are comparable to Barolo.  The Bianco from the Caricante grape has a Riesling-like character.

The most well known wine of Sicily is Marsala and it is sourced from the Val di Mazara on the west side of the island.  The Val di Noto is on the southeast side and it provides our store shelves with Sicily's most popular red, Nero d'Avola.  Catarratto is the most widely planted white grape but most of it is destined for Marsala.  Grillo and Inzolia are the most popular white table wine grapes.  In all, Sicily offers sixty-five native grape varieties.

Now you know what an incredible place Sicily is in the wine industry.  We have to stop this too-large undertaking at some point but not before this last tidbit: Being an arid island, Sicilian vineyards benefit from breezes that cool vineyards and prevent mildew and rot from getting started so there is a disproportionately large amount of organic farming going on there.

Girasole

Do we need pesticides in our vineyards?  It's a good question.  What if our regular glass of wine contains some small percentage of bad stuff and that little bit could lead to health problems later in life?  Girasole (geer-uh-so-lay) Vineyards believes we should be concerned.

Girasole is a Mendocino County family-owned and operated certified organic estate winery established by Charlie Barra in 1955.  Once again an Italian-American leads a family winery into generational success.  Only this time the achievement is more impressive because of the organics emphasis.

To attain the CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) label means accepting annual audits, regular verification paperwork and additional labor requirements.  It also means accepting risks, pests being the worst of them.  

To be labeled organic a wine must limit sulphur to less than 99ppm.  Non-organics are allowed up to 350ppm.  Barra organic wines test at half of what's allowed.  While regular yeasts show a small petrochemical content, Barra's organic yeasts have none.  For sixty years, way before others got on the bandwagon, Barra has farmed the organic way while concurrently being a board member of the California North Coast Grape Growers Association.

Girasole (Italian for sunflower) is a three hundred acre estate in the Redwood Valley, the headwaters of the Russian River.  All of the grapes are estate grown and handharvested, making this operation all the more impressive.

The Happiest Wine on Earth

Credit for this post title goes to wine writer Jan Bonne for calling Bugey-Cerdon what it is, a niche wine anomaly if we ever heard of one.  Patrick Bottex, the best known Bugey-Cerdon producer, says his wine is "lively and playful, has a deep pink color with a fine (sparkling) bead, ambrosial fragrances of strawberry and roses and finishes crisply."  Winesearcher says, "floral, somewhat sweet with fresh minerality."  Eater says it's "a touch sweet," adding nuances of rhubarb and wildberries.  The Bugey importer, Kermit Lynch, gets into it with "watermelon."  It's also light, low-alcohol and when you consider it's SUMMER, you get the idea: this stuff is a charming borderline fruit bomb and with that, we think Jan Bonne got it right.

Bugey-Cerdon is one of ten subappellations of Bugey and the only one to receive AOC certification (2009).  For fifty years before that it was a VDQS wine, one step above vin de table, and we're betting you really had to be a wine geek to even stumble upon the stuff.  The Bugey-Cerdon locale is on the western edge of the Alps between Jura and Savoie.  Historically the region was loosely considered to be a part of Burgundy, which it wasn't, but the locals thought of it that way.  It's actually twenty miles or so from both Burgundy to the west and Savoie to the east.  Maybe thirty miles or so to Geneva, Switzerland.

Bugey-Cerdon is typically made with a blend of Gamay and Poulsard grapes.  It may legally be made with 100% Gamay grapes.  It is made into bubbly using the pre-Champagne, Methode Ancestrale process that uses no second yeast application leaving the wine off-dry and somewhat grapey.  Alcohol is 7-8.5%; residual sugar is 22-80g per liter (off-dry to sweet). 

The village of Cerdon is in the southern Jura mountains.  The vineyards surround the village on steep southeastern mountainside slopes.  The soils are rocky, so free draining; the climate is cool.

There is more to the Burgundy connection: In the pre-wine appellation middle ages, the Bugey region was considered to be Burgundy.  And while the sparkling roses of Bugey-Cerdon are what the region is known for today, there are some serious pinots made in the other subappellations of Bugey.

Food affinities for Bugey-Cerdon?  Try breakfast pastries.  If it's a sweeter version, maybe some desserts.

The Emily

The Emily is a South African Chardonnay that curiously includes two percent Pinot Noir.  Two percent.  Why?  Who knows?  We would say just for the slightly pink color, except the two percent pinot also beefs up the body and enhances the flavor.  So like we always say, there's no reason to blend grapes unless you improve the end result, and the proprietor, Longridge, has made The Emily a very worthwhile quaff.

The Emily commemorated in the wine name is Emily Hobhouse, a humanitarian who exposed the cruelty of Anglo-Boer war concentration camps at the turn of the last century.  They say as much on the back label.  They also hint at the reason for the two percent Pinot Noir.  They say it is for the color.  "Oeil de Perdrix" (eye of the partridge) is a historic very blush color which wine makers seemingly aspire to recreate.

The wine is sourced from Stellenbosch, the oldest and finest wine appellation in South Africa.  Their claim to fame is Cabernet Sauvignon and those grapes, of course, get the choice hillside vineyards with their rocky soils.  The white wine grapes typically are sourced from clayey Stellenbosch valley vineyards closer to the maritime influencing False Bay.  The vineyards used for this wine are biodynamically farmed and the fruit is hand harvested.

(FYI - Geologists claim South African soils to be the oldest vineyard soils in the world.)

The Emily is unoaked Chardonnay but the wine is left on the lees for nine months before blending in the two percent oaked pinot.  That would also account for some of its richness.  Depending on which review you look at, the wine may have aromas and flavors of guava, kiwi, citrus, kumquat, peach, melon or green apple.  We think this wine would go with chicken, turkey or maybe...partridge.